Every once in a while a movie comes along that can be used as a yardstick to measure just how different people want their movies to be. Computer Chess is that movie for 2013. This period-set story of a weekend competition for chess programmers is a pitch-perfect recreation of early ’80s geek culture — when the geeks were truly awkward outcasts — and a very unusual exploration of the intersection between humanity and technology.

This is an unusual film, but also one that is constructed with incredible care, and a killer eye for detail. While the plot edges towards sci-fi, there’s a degree to which this is a film that you just have to feel your way through. It isn’t very concerned with laying out answers or final conclusions about some of the ideas it proposes. But it captures a moment in history in a way that is totally unique. Check out the theatrical trailer below.

Set over the course of a weekend tournament for chess software programmers thirty-some years ago, COMPUTER CHESS transports viewers to a nostalgic moment when the contest between technology and the human spirit seemed a little more up for grabs. We get to know the eccentric geniuses possessed with the vision to teach a metal box to defeat man, literally, at his own game, laying the groundwork for artificial intelligence as we know it and will come to know it in the future.